大象传媒

Mr. John Snook Date of Birth 28.10.1921

It was the habit of teenagers such as myself to practice water polo at weekends, and it was the usual thing on Sunday mornings to swim off the pier at West Bay and practice water polo. But, a pal of mine, who was an apprentice chemist at Boots, lived in South Street, and we rode our bicycles along and stopped at his house,and he said 'We can't go, because Dad has said we must listen to Mr Chamberlain. Mr Chamberlain is making a speech at eleven o'clock. So we sat on our bicycles, we opened the windows of the house, and we heard Mr Chamberlain, in a very grave voice say 'Unless I hear from Herr Hitler by eleven o'clock we shall declare war on Germany'. And that was the first, the only real remembrance I have of that particular day.

Because I had a driving licence, although very young, I had only just passed my test, but I was invited to be an ambulance driver for the local ARP, and as a consequence it was great fun driving a converted Ford V-8 and in fact on one occasion we took it to Dorchester and I put my foot down rather too much, and blew a gasket. Also thereafter followed various activities, training exercises at Dorchester and Weymouth, and on a number of occasion I drove a converted horse-box which was a surgery on wheels!

The manager of Boots the Chemist, Stephen Poole, charming man, said 'We must do something in the blackout', so we established a concert party. We named ourselves the Blackout Brighteners and we pout on a number of concerts and Claude R Hyder, who was then the local photographer, his son later flew with the RAF, was among our group, and filmed, Claude R Hyder filmed one of our performances.

My father was in the Special Police and thereafter he transferred to the Royal Observer Corps. The Royal Observer Corps had a post on Brewery Hill and my Dad did shifts with all the local bigwigs, as it were. That's a strange thing. Anyone who was anyone in Bridport, seemed to join the Royal Observer Corps. The Home Guard were a different kettle of fish. Possibly they were more belligerent.

Regarding food rationing, we had chickens, and a very large garden, with an orchard and as far as fruit and veg were concerned we were self-supporting so we managed. And my father was in business, he had his own contacts. This was provincial England. My father's business was where Loyds-TSB was, and the pub next door had a bomb dropped on it - the Star - and Jack Hecks, the son of the landlord was killed there. And of course my father's business had the windows blown out at the back and front, and it was boarded up, but the boarding couldn't have been terribly secure, because it was burgled a couple of nights after.

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